Technology
XDN™ was built on a Next-Generation, fully generic Content Delivery technology stack:
Before being used as the brains and brawn behind the XDN™ platform, these have been originally used and stress-tested to build fully functional private content delivery networks.
XDN™ showcases a set of products that have proven track record of leveraging highly distributed infrastructures and managing them as one unified and consistent Content Delivery Network.
Each component of the XDN™ was designed from the ground up, integrating with the most widespread existing Content Delivery software out there, all following this set of principles:
- Highly distributed
- Highly resilient
- Embraces graceful failure as a design principle
- Deeply tunable and elastic
- Compatible with existing Content Delivery Networks and Server technologies
- API-centric, making it trivial to integrate with your existing backend
CrowdDirector™
CrowdDirector™ is our universal purpose-built content load balancer In The Sky.
It is the foundation of the XDN™ technology stack.
Load balancing as a service
We have spun CrowdDirector redirector nodes all across the globe and packaged them with the lightest footprint possible to be able to spin them in multiple additional geographies in seconds as the need arises.
CrowdDirector™ is the service part of the XDN™ formula and is fully operated by our Operations engineers.
Criteria-rich load balancing
CrowdDirector™ was built in a way that it can generically route traffic between virtually any Content Delivery infrastructure, whether using HTTP 302 redirects or DNS redirects.
Routing rules available for CrowdDirector™ include:
- Time of day, schedules
- ASNs, IP Addresses
- Location (including metros)
- Regex based URL inspection
- many other HTTP 302 specific hooks…
Stateful load balancing
CrowdDirector™ integrates tightly with the CrowdCache™ edge proxy, offering health, performance and capacity hooks to tie all the Infrastructure Providers’ XDN™ resources together in a unified, self-healing delivery network.
CrowdCache™ edge nodes enter and exit the pools of routing resources depending on their health, performance and headroom.
When used with 3rd party delivery resources, the health-check system will ensure no content request gets routed to failing content delivery assets.
CrowdDirector™ tech specs at a glance:
Globally anycast DNS/HTTP redirectors (computing of inbound requests)
|
Zero Software/Hardware needed: Cloud Load Balancer
|
Dual HTTP 302 redirects and DNS load-balancer
|
Highly configurable health-checking backend
|
Powerful analytics:
|
| Integration API to manipulate Rule Sets and integrate into white labeling |
CrowdCache™
CrowdCache™ brings to the table the integrated control plane that every hardware, off-the-shelf and open-source caching solution lacks.
…with the lightest weight and footprint possible.
Light-weight reverse proxy-cache in a box.
CrowdCache™ is a full-blown Edge Proxy Caching server. With a file size of merely 5MB, this small footprint Java binary will turn any server into a powerful edge proxy-caching server.
A proxy with a unified control plane
Not only will this server literally take seconds to deploy, but it will also register instantly with the XDN™ crowd-sourced delivery network after booting.
When booting, a CrowdCache™ node will establish persistent connections with the health-checking backend, origin and edge-mapping configuration repository and CrowdDirector Rules engine. Any change in the aforementioned will be applied to the overall fleet of CrowdCaches™ in near real time.
Feature-rich edge caching
CrowdCache™ natively includes all features found in legacy CDNs: HTTP Pseudo-Streaming for FLV and MP4, secure tokens, short-lived URLs, rate-throttling by content type, automatic based on meta-data…
Running a unified CrowdCache™ fleet of servers also brings a significant byproduct: all features added to the software in the future will be loaded remotely, without service interruption, rendering the new feature rollouts completely transparent for both Content Provider customers and Infrastructure Provider partners.
CrowdCache™ service specs at a glance:
| lightweight: <5MB binary |
| small footprint: sealed Jar file, no external need than Java 1.6 needed. |
| JAR or ISO deployment |
Massively distributed, operated through CrowdDirector Web GUI
|
| Seamless connection to CrowdDirector™ health-checking and performance backend |
Seamless integration to the CrowdDirector™ analytics backplane:
|
Deeply configurable cache behavior:
|
| Tokenized, short-lived URLs |
| 3rd universal token adaptor |
HTTP Video Seeking:
|
Rate shaping
|
Raw Logs
|
CrowdDirector™, CrowdCache™ and statistics API
“One API to rule them all…”
Service point oriented platform
Every component designed on the CrowdDirector™ and CrowdCache™ platforms interact and are configured through an API. Whether the desired action is to withdraw info on the objects configured in the XDN™ world, to configure them, edit them or delete them, everything equals to calling a service point.
Since we internally use API to interconnect all elements of our platforms, it is only natural that we make some of them public for our customers to:
- Integrate with their own backend and delivery strategy
- Build Apps that unveil new possibilities
- Automate some of the most common manual tasks they would initially perform through the Web UI of CrowdDirector™
Available API service points
At current, you can, amongst others:
- get/clone/edit/delete CrowdDirector Rule Sets
- get/set/edit/delete CrowdCache Origin-to-Edge mappings
- get traffic statistics: hits, traffic
Let us know of any specific need to expand the API scope, we will likely only need to make public some endpoints we already use internally within the platform.
XDN, Inc.
Office +1 415 445 4500
Contact us: info@xdn.com
2121 S. El Camino Real, Ste. 6000
San Mateo, CA 94403
7 May 2012
@xdnfeed: XDN is hiring http://t.co/PlDqm8Ol
